you, I think that you are at She smiled at him.
'I do not believe it, but yes, I am at peace here.'
Nalte stared at the fire that burned in the center of the village.
'You might have been happy had you stayed,' he said quietly.
'And maybe not. Our women are the gatherers. The first green vegetables
are the yucca, and the women collect them. Then they must collect the me
seal stalks and roast them and grind them into paste. We eat the mescal
as paste, and as the cakes you have been given with your meals. It is a
hard life.'
'A ranch is a hard life. And so is a newspaper,' Tess said softly.
She looked at him quickly.
'A newspaper' -- 'I know what a newspaper is. I lived in a town for many
years when I was a child. I was captured with a war party and taken in
by a minister's wife. I learned a lot about your society. A newspaper is
a powerful weapon.'
'It isn't a weapon at all,' Tess protested. 'More powerful than a gun.
Be careful with it,' Nalte warned her. Then he asked her if she was
Jamie's wife. She flushed as she told him that she was not.
'But you are his woman,' Nalte told her.
'It--it isn't the same thing,' she said.
The Indian was lowering his head, smiling, and she remembered belatedly
that he had chosen to let her go because of Jamie.
'When an Apache marries, he goes to his wife's family. If she lives in a
distant territory, then the man leaves and joins her family. Within it
he may rise to be the leader, then he may become the leader of many
families, and ultimately a great chief. But always, when it is possible,
he joins his wife's family. He works for his wife's parents and elders,
and he is known by them as 'he who carries burdens for me.'
He speaks for her, and the man and the woman exchange gifts. A separate
dwelling is made for the couple. She is his wife.
'But I tell you, Sun-Colored Woman, that it is the same among the Apache
and the whites. When a man loves a woman, when he claims her for his
own, when he is willing to give his life and his pride and his honor for
her, that is when she is truly his wife, in his eyes and in the eyes of
the 249 great spirits, be they our gods or the one great God of the
whites.' He touched her cheek almost tenderly, then left her. She
thought about his words for a long time to come, and she wondered if
Jamie did love her. Did he love her enough to stay with her, or would he
tire of her, as he had tired of Eliza?
She had made love with him always of her own volition. She had wanted
him as she had never known want before.
But sometimes she wished that she had never given in to the temptation,
for she felt that she had tasted forbidden fruit.
She had found it very sweet, but she would perish when she could taste
it no longer. ~ Nights were theirs. She never spoke, but came to him
with her skin warmed by the fire, her body bathed by the stream, her
hair soft and fragrant from the sun. She lay down be- side him, and she
loved him, and she tried not to think of the future.
On the fourth night of Little Flower's puberty rite, when the maiden had
